Connecting: It's Part of Making a Bestseller
Write Better Now
I’ve started a series of paid and free posts about writing bestsellers.
I know! I know! What a lofty goal. You might think that your book about zombie hamsters taking over Bar Harbor, Maine could never be a bestseller.
Or, you might think that you don’t want your story to be a bestseller, just a good and solid story. Bestselling, you might think, is crass.
And those are find ways to think! But here’s why I’m going after these posts this way. I think if you aim for bestseller rather than for ‘good enough,’ you’re going to have a better crafted story at the end.
My first post about this is here.
Let’s move on!
EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS MAKE BESTSELLERS
Back in 2012, James Hall wrote a book about “cracking the code” of the last century’s “biggest bestsellers.”
“Bestsellers,” Hall writes, '“have a primal aim—to stir the reader’s heart and to make us forge a powerful emotional bond with a fictional character that is, more often than not, composed of one part pity, one part fear.”
Elizabeth Travis Ward agrees, writing in her blog, “Learning how to make readers care about your fictional characters largely comes down to one thing: Showing them what your characters’ motivations are. Those motivations can take them from seeming cookie-cutter or caricature-like to real and unforgettable.”
If you are anything like me (I hope you are not), you’re thinking, “Yes, yes, whatever. How, Carrie? How do I do that?”
It’s all about your character’s motivation. The more rich and intense it is, generally the more your reader connects with it.
Ward suggests asking yourself these seven questions (they are direct quotes):
What is this character suffering from?
What is this character’s vulnerability and what caused it?
What does this character want so desperately that she’ll do anything to get it?
How is all of this manifested in the character’s life?
What will the character do in my story to hide and protect her suffering, vulnerability and desperate desire?
How will her suffering, vulnerability and desperate desire be threatened?
If he loses his suffering, vulnerability and desperate desire, what will the consequences be for him?
Cool, right? As I’m looking over the questions and thinking of the novel I’m working on, I realize my character doesn’t hide her suffering. She’s an open book. Now I’m wondering if she should be.
TO HELP READERS CONNECT WITH YOUR CHARACTERS THINK MOTIVATION.
So, you want to make that motivation:
Intense, complicated via a well drawn backstory,
Committed
Motivate every damn thing that they do.
“A character’s intense commitment to his or her cause, while not always pure and selfless, is ultimately a goal most of us find worthy and important,” Hall writes.
I have a caveat here. In most genre novels, that backstory is not plopped down in the beginning of the book in paragraph after paragraph of internal dialogue or exposition.
Instead, the intense and complex backstory and motivations of your character are sprinkled into the story—a dash here, a dash there—via dialogue and action mostly so that your readers are shown that backstory rather than told that backstory.
This very told paragraph…
Carrie longed to be loved and appreciated and worried that if she didn’t work hard, she would have worth and therefore not be loved and appreciated. This was all because her seventh grade English teacher told her that nobody would love her because her voice was so goofy, so she better work triply hard.
Than this…
“Babe, it’s 2 a.m. You have to stop working.”
Carrie gulped down more of her coffee. “Almost done.”
“Honey, you’re not—”
“I have to make at least $5,000 this month.” Her hand shook as she pointed at him. “You go to bed, OK? Get some sleep.”
“If we just did the podcast.”
“No! Not with my voice! I-I-sound like a zombie hamster.”
Obviously, not awesome, but you see the difference, right? Eventually, we trust that the author will show us more about that English teacher and Carrie’s voice issues and her worries about being loved only if she is worthy via work.
MAKE THEM STRUGGLE! MAKE THEM FLAWED! MAKE THEM RELATABLE!
We’ve talked about this before, but Neil Chase, does a lovely job of it, too.
To make readers care about your character, you can not make things too easy for the character nor can you make the character too perfect.
Chase writes, “All iconic and memorable story characters feel human and relatable.
“By making your story characters relatable and three-dimensional, you give readers a character they can invest in and root for. Humanized characters add depth and richness to your story, helping to create a more complex narrative.
“Finally, grounding your characters in reality makes it easier for readers to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in your story world.
“In short, humanizing your characters is essential for writing a successful and engaging story.”
